The Book of Unknown Americans: List 5

by Cristina Henríquez
After Maribel Rivera sustains a debilitating injury, her family leaves a comfortable life in Mexico to seek treatment in the United States. Maribel develops a close relationship with her new neighbor Mayor, setting in motion a devastating chain of events.

This list covers pages 218–286 in the 2015 Vintage Contemporaries edition.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: List 1, List 2, List 3, List 4, List 5
35 words 58 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. sullen
    showing a brooding ill humor
    After we told her that she couldn’t see Mayor anymore, Maribel grew moody and sullen.
  2. insurrection
    organized opposition to authority
    I had learned by then that Maribel liked to think of herself as a rebel. And yet she managed only small insurrections.
  3. impervious
    not admitting of passage or capable of being affected
    She walked through the middle of the boys’ soccer games in the street, impervious to their shouts for her to get out of the way.
  4. undermine
    weaken or impair, especially gradually
    She had been showing so much improvement—the latest report from the school had said that Maribel could easily answer questions and follow prompts, and that her attention span had increased—and I hoped we hadn’t just undermined all of her progress.
  5. disheveled
    in disarray; extremely disorderly
    I looked at his disheveled hair, his heavy eyes fighting the dragging tide of sleep.
  6. indisputable
    not open to question; obviously true
    “She’s getting better,” I said, as if by repeating it enough, I could somehow make it part of the public record, an indisputable fact.
  7. lurch
    move haltingly and unsteadily
    On the way out of the school parking lot, the car had lurched and sputtered as I got it up to speed, but once we were in fourth gear, I just squeezed my hands around the steering wheel and stayed in the same lane, cruising along down Route 7, toward Route 1.
  8. rapt
    feeling great delight and interest
    Maribel kept her face against the window, rapt and in awe.
  9. macabre
    shockingly repellent; inspiring horror
    In my case, I was working at a newspaper in Sinaloa for years, trying to report on the drug war, trying to make people there aware of what was happening in their own backyard, but my bosses only had an appetite for the macabre.
  10. advocate
    speak, plead, or argue in favor of
    Now I work with a group in Wilmington that’s advocating for legislation reform for immigrants.
  11. mantel
    a shelf that projects from the wall above a fireplace
    It was an old oven, scabbed with rust, and I remembered my dismay at seeing it when we first arrived. Nothing at all like the tile and clay oven I had in Pátzcuaro with its wide wood mantel.
  12. oblivious
    lacking conscious awareness of
    I forced myself to imagine scenarios in which Maribel was fine: She was sitting on the bus, twisting her hair between her fingers, staring out the window at the traffic on the street; she was asleep in the bus seat, oblivious to the delay; she was only a block from our apartment, pulling her backpack onto her shoulders, preparing to get off.
  13. wellspring
    an abundant source
    I couldn’t speak. Tears from a wellspring deep and dark streamed down my face.
  14. confines
    a bounded scope
    I’d taken Maribel away because why? Because I’d wanted to see her? Because I was trying to be romantic? Because I was trying to free her from the confines of her life?
  15. forage
    collect or look around for, as food
    My mom foraged through her closet for clothes she could give the Riveras when they got home, even though my dad looked at her like she was crazy and asked, “What do they need with clothes?”
  16. mired
    entangled or hindered
    I was mired in a feeling that was heavy and sick.
  17. articulate
    express or state clearly
    I didn’t have an answer, at least not one that I could articulate.
  18. wiry
    lean but strong
    “No. No. Maribel, come here.” I pulled her to my hip, feeling her wiry, warm body against mine.
  19. waft
    be driven or carried along, as by the air
    I turned back toward the bed to see if maybe, just maybe, he was stirring, stretching his arms overhead and rubbing his eyes. To see if he would swing his legs over the side of the mattress and stand up and wander to the bathroom and shave his face, the smell of soap wafting out to the hallway.
  20. condolence
    an expression of sympathy with another's grief
    She apologized over and over, and though at first I mistook her apologies for condolences, I realized soon enough that she believed she had a role in what had happened—or maybe that Mayor did—and I had to tell her, “No. Stop. Please.”
  21. tolerable
    capable of being borne or endured
    I welcomed visitors. They made the passage of time tolerable.
  22. exquisite
    intense or sharp
    He handed me a photograph of Maribel, Arturo, and me, smiling in our winter coats in front of the Toros' door. Looking at it, the most exquisite pain seared across my chest.
  23. stricken
    affected by something overwhelming
    Fito arrived and stood in the doorway, stricken, the skin on his face sagging.
  24. unfurl
    unroll, unfold, or spread out
    I pulled the sheets off the bed with the idea that I could gather up the imprint of him and save it. I thought, I can unfurl the sheets on our old bed at home.
  25. permeate
    spread or diffuse through
    If I had no knowledge that he had ever existed, no evidence that he was ever a part of our lives, it might have been bearable. And how wrong that sounded: part of our lives. As if he was something with boundaries, something that hadn’t permeated us, flowed through us and in us and all around us.
  26. casket
    box in which a corpse is buried or cremated
    Arturo would be buried on Thursday morning at the All Saints Cemetery. He would be lowered into the ground in a casket I could barely afford, even though I had instructed the funeral home to use the most inexpensive one they could.
  27. indifference
    the trait of remaining calm and seeming not to care
    I was grateful for his indifference to us. To him we could have been anyone.
  28. sprawling
    spreading out in different directions
    We passed red barns and stone mills, small white houses with black shutters and houses with wooden fences around their sprawling land, everything silent and still.
  29. spire
    a tall tower that forms the superstructure of a building
    We drove through the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel and then along the outskirts of Washington, D.C., where we passed a temple with gold spires striking up into the air.
  30. absolution
    the condition of being formally forgiven by a priest
    There was no way to know the answer, and yet I remembered what Arturo had said, one of the last things he had told me, as if somehow he had known to offer me absolution in advance: Forgive yourself.
  31. notarize
    authenticate by someone empowered to witness signatures
    I had called the consulate, filled out the papers, gotten them notarized and translated into Spanish.
  32. adobe
    sun-dried brick used in hot dry climates
    Arturo was going with us to the wide, silent lake and the butterfly fishermen who glided over its surface. To the red tile roofs and the rough adobe walls of both his childhood and mine.
  33. impetuous
    characterized by undue haste and lack of thought
    And as I looked at her I saw that maybe she had been here all along. Not exactly the girl she used to be before the accident, which was the girl I thought I had been searching for, but my Maribel, brave and impetuous and kind.
  34. lull
    make calm or still
    After we’d eaten some of the crackers and drunk the bottled water that Celia had thrust into my arms when she and Rafael had said good-bye, Maribel fell asleep again, lulled by the sound of the road, and I closed my eyes, too.
  35. lush
    produced or growing in extreme abundance
    The land in Arkansas was lime green and lush, flat and boundless. Tiny buds stood on the heads of blades of grass all over the fields.
Created on Sat Sep 01 15:29:21 EDT 2018 (updated Thu Sep 06 11:23:42 EDT 2018)

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